He stepped away and lit a cigar. “Well, if that’s the way you want it. What a waste. What possible harm could there be in having a little diversion on the trail? After we catch up to Gaby it won’t be so easy.”
“There’s no harm in it for you,” I said, “because you don’t care about me. Oh, I think you have some feeling for me, because we’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve been through a lot together. But you don’t love me, not the way I love you. I don’t know why I love you. I just can’t help myself. And every time you touch me, it’s like you were reopening old wounds and pouring vinegar into them.”
“So that’s why you came along on this little adventure,” he said. “To torture yourself?”
"I came to help Gabrielle,” I said stubbornly. “ Or that’s what I told myself at the time. Oh, hell. I don’t know why I came! I wish I knew what makes me do the things I do! I don’t think about my reasons. I just act! I live! What do you want from me? I’m a Gypsy!”
“I think you’re using Gaby as an excuse to get away from Steve,” he said shrewdly. “It’s an easy way out of your situation. You don’t want to hurt him by breaking it off yourself, and so you run off with me, giving him a fine excuse for breaking with you. No man likes to be made to look a fool. No one would believe that you and I spent months in each other’s company without succumbing to the inevitable.”
“You’re wrong!” I cried. “You know perfectly well that we didn’t expect to be gone more than a couple of weeks. As it is now—except for that incident in Independence—we can truthfully say that nothing happened between us. Nothing! That we were like—brother and sister. I intend to tell Steven the truth about us when we go back. And then I’ll let him decide if he still wants to marry me. I still want to marry him. And you still want to spoil it!”
He sighed and shook his head. “You’re hopelessly confused, Rhawnie. You’ve been a liar for so long that you wouldn’t know the truth if it reared up and kissed you on the mouth. You say you love me. You come two thousand miles with me even though you could have turned back at any time, as long ago as St. Louis. You admit that you want me as much as I want you. But you tell me that I’m not supposed to touch you because you have some crazy idea about saving yourself for Steven. Why? You just finished telling me that when you told him about us your engagement to him would be in trouble. You really think that he’ll be willing to marry you when he knows? Then why didn’t you tell him long ago? Because you know that he’s going to be appalled and sickened when he learns that the woman he loves belonged—no, belongs—to the man he considers the world’s biggest moral cretin. You—”
“No! No!” I covered my ears with my hands. “I can’t listen to any more! You’re just trying to get me mixed up!”
He threw up his hands. He tossed the stump of his cigar down and ground it out with his heel. I ran back to the campfire and crouched with my palms extended, warming them. The sky was a vast gleaming canopy of stars. A chill wind blew down from the north. A coyote howled in the distance, but inside the circle of fire I felt safe, secure.
I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees. I heard Seth come up behind me. He sat on the ground beside me and lightly touched the fine hairs at the nape of my neck.
“Take your hair down,” he whispered.
I lowered my face onto my arms and shivered. I tried to summon my strength but it had deserted me. He sensed that I had been teetering on the edge of a precipice, and that at the slightest pressure from him—over I’d go. He knew the wanton in me; he had created her. He knew that when he touched me, the wanton would yearn for more than a kiss. And he knew that when he murmured sweet words and accompanied them by a deft caress, the little imps of desire that lived in me would clamor for more. He didn’t want rape. He wanted surrender.
I sighed deeply and tumbled over the precipice.
He took the pins out of my hair and unlaced my braids His mouth did terrifying things to my neck and throat and lips. With a groan I lay back in his arms and pulled him close to me.
He spread out a blanket near the fire and we undressed each other. I shivered a little. But his hands and mouth and fine strong body worked their magic and I soon forgot the cold. The wanton took possession of me. I stroked his velvety smooth manhood, source of so much delight, so much distress. I lifted my body to receive him. He gasped with pleasure and he descended into sweet darkness. He moved slowly and knowingly. I writhed ecstatically, rejoicing in the disarming sensations that washed over me. He drove deeper, harder, straining to possess me. He took my buttocks in his great hands and palpated my flesh, and he lowered his dark head over my breasts, kissing and exciting them. I nearly went mad. I was his slave, his— Something happened. I began to scratch and beat at him, to dig my nails into his flesh and to bite the shoulder nearest my mouth.
"Stop it!” I cried, wriggling out from under him. “Let me go! I don’t want you!”
He swore at me and told me to calm down. I couldn’t. I tore at him, hating him, hating myself for falling so easily into his snare. All the tenderness between us vanished and the wind felt cold again. I struggled desperately to get away from him. He pinned my hands above my head and tried to kiss me. I tossed and rolled my head.
Tears flooded my cheeks. I craned my neck forward so that I could savage his flesh with my teeth. He pulled back, out of reach. I wept with anger and frustration and fear. I didn’t want to lose my heart to him again, and have him return it to me looking like it had been battered in the paddles of a steamboat wheel.
“I don’t want you!” I sobbed. “I hate you! Get away from me!”
"You crazy bitch,” he growled. “What’s the matter with you?”
I raved on and on, and fought and twisted and kicked. Then he slapped my cheek, rather lightly. The blow stung me and shocked me and stopped my ranting in mid-curse. I gazed at him for a long moment, my eyes full of surprise and hurt wonder. Then I started to cry, awful wrenching sobs that tore me apart. Never in my life had I cried like that, and certainly not in front of him.
He lifted himself off me. I rolled onto my side and drew my knees up and cried and cried like an hysterical child. I would have expected him to slink away, feeling angry and thwarted, to drink whiskey and smoke sullenly. But after a minute or two he knelt beside me and gathered me into his arms. I clung to him. He smoothed my hair and whispered softly and soothingly to me. He said my name over and over again, and he told me to be quiet and he said that everything would be all right.
I tightened my arms around him and drew on his great strength. Finally the tears stopped flowing. Sobs like shudders wracked my body for a long time afterwards. I wouldn’t let him go. As long as I could cling to him like that I could pretend to myself that he loved me. And that night I needed the pretense. It made me feel a little better about betraying Steven’s trust, about the mess I’d gotten myself into. I did love Seth. Just as I told him, always and forever. And only a simpleton would believe that I had come all this way with him just to help him search for his sister. No, I had wanted to be alone with him, to make him love me, to win him forever. Only it hadn’t worked that way, and it wouldn’t. I had just presented him with one more blazing opportunity to make a fool of me.
He said, “I’ll leave you. Try and get some sleep.” But I pleaded with him to stay with me. So he drew another blanket and my wool cloak over us and lay down beside me. I rested my head on his shoulder and put one hand on his chest. Time passed and the stars wheeled in their orbits. I grew quiet and warm. I moved my hand lower, to his stomach. Nice. And to his abdomen. As tight as a drum head, even when he was relaxed. Still lower— he caught my wrist.
“ No,” he said sternly. "After that disgusting exhibition I just witnessed?”
“I don’t know what came over me,” I said humbly. "I can never again boast to you about how brave I am, about how I never cry. You—you won’t tell?”
“I’ll tell everyone I know,” he assured me. “And when we get back to civilization, I�
�ll publish the truth about you.”
"I’m ashamed of myself."
“You should be. Go back to sleep.”
“You think I’m bad.”
“I think you’re the world’s second biggest moral cretin. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
My hand began to stray again. This time he didn’t try to stop it. I found his sleeping member, no bigger than a new kitten. I stroked it lightly until it swelled and throbbed under my hand. I covered him with my body and kissed his eyes and his ears and his mouth and his throat. I licked his small flat nipples until they were hard, and then I buried my face in the soft fur of his belly while I kneaded his thighs and buttocks with long, strong fingers. He twitched and moaned. From the tightness in his body I could tell that he was trying not to abandon himself to pleasure.
I slid down and barricaded myself behind the low wall of his open legs. His breathing became deep and rapid. I worshipped his swollen idol with my fingers and my lips, loving it, tasting it, taking it into my mouth, into my soul. Taking it all. He clutched at my hair and strained against me. I sank my fingernails into his hard buttocks and heard him suck in his breath. He couldn’t hold back any more. He gave a great moan and a convulsive heave, and he was mine.
I lay quietly between his legs, my head pillowed on his belly, my hand covering his shrinking trophy. I felt victorious. Over him, and over myself. I had taken him. He had not taken me. I had rendered him helpless. And I had subjugated him not by force but by desire. He was in my power, and I had done it in my own time, in my own way.
The object under my hand awoke again and stirred and stretched, growing strong and straight. Seth lifted me up so that our eyes were even once more. He touched my face lightly.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured softly. “Completely crazy. But completely beautiful.”
He turned me on my back and lowered himself onto me. I welcomed him, and I let him know it, but not with words. Our bodies moved together, softly as a sigh. And the stars looked down. . . .
In the morning, even before the sun came up, he prodded me with his boot.
“Time to get up. We can make it to North Platte crossing by nightfall if we ride hard today and don’t waste time.”
“North Platte Crossing?” I grumbled. “Why on earth would anyone want to go to North Platte Crossing?” I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Mercilessly, he stooped down and ripped it off me. I shivered in the cold pre-dawn air. “All right, all right,” I said irritably. “I’m coming.”
I dressed quickly and brushed and braided my hair. I groped in the darkness for my pins, on the ground where I thought Seth had left them, but I could find only two. I had to let my braids flop. The day didn’t get any better. The girth on Fire’s saddle snapped when I was tightening it, and rather than take time out to fix it, I decided that I would ride bareback that day.
We rode out. Seth was wrapped in silence. It wasn’t morning too-early-to-talk silence, but the kind he used for a retreat when I had annoyed him in some way or when he wanted to think.
I didn’t care about his mood. I grinned and sang a little Gypsy song to Fire, who liked music. I felt free again. I wasn’t afraid of Seth any more. The business with Steven would straighten itself out. What was I worried about?” I kept my distance from Seth, sometimes letting him get a quarter of a mile ahead before I put on a burst of speed and caught up with him again.
Seth rode Blaze and led the packhorse, Venus. The Rocky Mountains lay in front of us, distorting the evenness of the horizon. The sky was brilliant, dazzling. A lark sang. A grouse chipped. Rabbits and deer scurried along.
We reached the mountains and searched there for a week, to no avail. Then in some obscure pass near the Sweetwater River, we found a dead horse blocking the trail. We examined it.
“He’s wearing shoes. Not a wild pony,” I said. “I think he died of exhaustion.”
“Well, they can’t get far with one less horse. He hasn’t been dead too long. A couple of days. Rigor passed off long ago.”
I saw their wagon first, at the bottom of a precipice. Vultures circled lazily overhead. I shuddered and closed my eyes.
Seth and I went down on foot to look. A horse with two broken legs gasped raggedly under the rubble. Two other horses lay close by, already dead. Seth shot the horse who was still alive, to end its misery. I cursed Boris. Any fool could see that the trail around the cliff was too narrow for a wagon.
Then I saw a foot jutting out from under the wreck. A man’s boot. I touched it. He was dead.
Seth and I lifted the crumpled wagon off him and dragged him out. There was no sign of Gabrielle. The corpse’s blond head was matted with blood.
“She’s got to be around here someplace. She’s not in the wagon.” Seth looked around anxiously.
“Perhaps she was following on foot,” I suggested hopefully. “She might not have gone over at all.”
We shouted for her. Our words came back to us.
“We’ll search,” Seth said. “She might have been hurt and crawled away to a sheltered place. Take the south side and I’ll—don’t bother with him. Let the vultures have him.”
I was trying to turn the body over so that I could see his face. I had a peculiar feeling. Something was wrong. The body was too big, too clumsy-looking. Boris would never have worn such ugly boots.
“Seth!” I called. “Come here, quickly!” He joined me and I looked up at him. “It’s not Boris,” I said.
He turned pale under his tan. “You’re lying,” he said quietly. “You’re lying! It’s got to be!”
“It’s not,” I said gently. “I knew Boris, remember? This man isn’t Boris Azubin. He’s too big, too heavy. He’s—he’s not Boris!”
Seth’s fingers dug into my shoulder. I winced. “If this is some kind of joke,” he said dangerously, “I’ll—”
“No, no!” I cried, “I swear I’m telling the truth! We’ll—we’ll search the wagon. Maybe we’ll find something!”
There were a few personal objects buried under the welter of canvas and wood that had been the Andersons’ wagon. A Bible, with a flyleaf that bore the names of a dozen Andersons and their brides and their children. A new-looking photograph of the dead man and a pretty dark-haired girl with wide eyes. A letter to Mary, signed “Bo.” A locket, with his face on one side and a pale lock of hair on the other.
We had been chasing a dream. I had an impulse to laugh—I know it was just nerves—and I stifled it swiftly. But the situation really was ludicrous. We had come well over a thousand miles, chasing people we didn’t even know. All of that suffering, all those days and nights on the trail, the rain and the cold and the sickness—it had all been for nothing.
I looked at Seth. His face was suffused with anger. His body was taut and tense, ready to snap. He seized my arm and twisted it behind my back. The pain was agonizing.
“This is your doing, I know it is!” he said through his teeth. “A wild goose chase! Almost two thousand miles! Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“I haven’t done anything!” I gasped. “Let me go, Seth. For the love of God, stop and think a moment! It wasn’t my idea to go chasing after the Valerie Jane. It was your father’s suggestion, remember? You can’t blame me for this mess! Blame your father!”
Why not? He wasn’t there to bear the brunt of Seth’s wrath, and I was.
“He was going to send a wire to St. Louis,” Seth said. “Did you check? Did you remember to go to the telegraph office and ask for a message? No, of course not.” He shook me. My shoulder strained in its socket. He let me go and gave me a little push. I fell on my knees and rubbed my aching arm. “You didn’t want to know the truth. It didn’t matter to you who we were chasing. You just wanted to get me out here so you could seduce me at your leisure! The biggest damned whore—”
“Me! Seduce you!” I shouted. “Why don’t you just slow down a little? You can’t blame me if I didn’t ask for a message in St. Louis. I did the best I could and
I didn’t get any help from you, remember? And I talked to the captain of the Valerie Jane as he told me that Boris and Gabrielle were on the boat from New Orleans. The description fit these Andersons perfectly! It’s just a horrible coincidence that they happened to be on that boat, that’s all. This man even gambled, just like Boris! You can’t blame me!”
“This Boris of yours was Russian, wasn’t he? Did it occur to you to ask anybody if Anderson spoke with a foreign accent like yours?”
“Accent!” I shouted. “What do you mean, accent?” It came out sounding like, “Vat do you mean, agzent!” I took a breath. “My English is as good as yours!”
He spun around and slammed his fist into a tree. I might have felt sorry for him if I didn’t hate him so much then. He really was the most pig-headed monkey I had ever known. It wasn’t my fault the Delta Belle blew up and wounded him so that he couldn’t ask his own damned questions. I hoped he smashed his hand to pieces.
“We’d better look for the girl,” I said after a few minutes of silence. “She might still be alive.”
He didn’t move. I searched through the trees at the base of the cliff. I found her huddled under a large overhanging rock. She was barely breathing.
“Mrs. Anderson,” I said softly. “Mrs. Anderson, can you hear me?”
I shouted for Seth. No answer. I shouted again. One of the woman’s legs jutted out at an awkward angle. I felt her bones gingerly and decided that not only was her leg smashed but her pelvis as well. If she was carrying a baby it was probably dead.
“Bo,” she moaned. “Bo.”
Seth came up. “She is very badly hurt,” I said softly without looking at him. “The best we can do is make her comfortable.”
She opened her eyes and stared into my face. I held her shoulders and clasped her hand reassuringly. “Where is Bo?” she asked weakly but lucidly. “Is Bo all right?”
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